We got tired of putting the tin back on the shelf.
Sami started with two mums, a supermarket vitamin aisle, and the same conversation every few months: this one has gelatin, that one won't say, and none of them will just tell us plainly.
The problem wasn't finding a vitamin. It was trusting one.
There is no shortage of kids' multivitamins. Bright tins, cartoon animals, flavours engineered to be asked for. What there wasn't — not one we could find — was a tin that answered the halal question on the front, in plain words, without us having to email a manufacturer and wait a week for a non-answer.
Gelatin is the usual culprit. It's what gives a gummy its chew, it's rendered from animal bone and hide, and it is almost never named where a parent can see it. Even when a brand does use pectin, the halal status of the flavourings and coatings is rarely addressed at all. So you end up doing what we did for years: reading the back of the pack under supermarket lighting, googling ingredient codes in the car park, and settling for a tablet your kid refuses to swallow.
Eventually, we realised we were having the same conversation over and over again: why was something as simple as buying our children a gummy vitamin taking this much research? We didn’t want another product we had to investigate. We wanted one we could pick up, understand and trust. So we decided to make it ourselves.
Four years of no, and then one yes.
STEP 01
We wrote the brief as parents
No gelatin, no alcohol-based extracts, no artificial dyes, and a taste our own kids would ask for. Non-negotiable, all four.
STEP 02
Most manufacturers said no
Getting the product we wanted wasn’t as simple as swapping one ingredient for another. We kept looking until we found a manufacturing partner willing to work to the standard we had set from the beginning.
STEP 03
Then came the taste tests
Natural fruit flavor won, and not by a small margin.
Our own children were the panel, and they were not diplomatic about the rejects.
We wanted Sami to feel like the gummies kids already get excited about — not like something they had to tolerate because it happened to be halal.
STEP 04
Certification, then launch
We didn't want halal to mean “we checked the ingredients ourselves.”
We wanted independent certification covering the finished product, so parents wouldn’t have to take our word for it.
Halal Certified by SSPY
Four years of no, and then one yes.
We wrote the brief as parents
No gelatin, no alcohol-based extracts, no artificial dyes, and a taste our own kids would ask for. Non-negotiable, all four.
Most manufacturers said no
Pectin is harder to work with than gelatin and the minimum orders are higher.
Then the taste tests
Natural fruit flavor won, and not by a small margin. Our own children were the panel, and they were not diplomatic about the rejects.
Certification, then launch
We wouldn't ship until the halal certification covered the finished product, not just the base. Halal Certified by SSPY
The name
We wanted a name that felt like it belonged to a child, not a supplement company. Sami is short, warm and familiar — the kind of name you can imagine hearing across a kitchen table or calling from the other room. Because from the beginning, we wanted this brand to feel personal. Not clinical. Not complicated. Just something made for families like ours.
What we promise you
Three commitments we'd want from a brand we were buying for our own kids.
No gelatin, ever
Not a current-formulation claim. A permanent one, written into the spec.
We tell you before we change anything
No quiet reformulations. If the formula moves, you hear it from us first.
You get a real person
One inbox, read by us. Ask about any ingredient and you'll get a straight answer.
“We made the vitamin we kept looking for ourselves, halal, simple to understand, and something our kids actually wanted to take.”